> The demand to live in these places is soaring, but the desire among incumbents to accommodate newcomers is low
Sums up why we ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder, Colorado. In the latter, there is a small but significant group of people whose idea is that the area needs fewer jobs, not smarter housing.
As a lifetime Oregonian, I enjoy Bend and get out there a couple times a year. My family even considered moving there a few years ago in search of a place with more sun. But in deciding between Boulder and Bend, we ended up choosing Boulder, well actually Broomfield, but Boulder was the draw, because as you found Boulder housing prices were too high.
Which leads me to the question, did you consider living outside of Boulder to still get most of the things on your checklist, but not face the high housing prices or difficult political climate?
The problem with Bend, as we came to decide, was there is no "outside of Bend", it's an island with not much of any other place to go for jobs, housing, diversity. Add in the fact that the jobs that are there don't support the house prices. With Boulder, you can always fall back to Denver or one of the many suburbs if your independent business or remote job falls through.
We ultimately moved back to the Portland area for other reasons, but would still choose Boulder/Denver over Bend if we had to do it again.
> did you consider living outside of Boulder to still get most of the things on your checklist, but not face the high housing prices or difficult political climate?
Yeah, but at that point, you're back to the whole car commute thing, or a really long bike ride. And you're significantly farther from the mountains by bike, too.
Fort Collins was something else that looked pretty interesting, but I didn't see many jobs there.
> there is no "outside of Bend"
Yeah, that's something we're nervous about, and definitely a point in favor of Boulder. OTOH, Bend does seem to be growing - they're building the new university now, which should help a little bit.
> the jobs that are there don't support the house prices
I got lucky from that point of view, I guess.
Speaking of stopping by, I'd be happy to meet up with people for beer or whatever as soon as we're slightly more settled in.
> Yeah, but at that point, you're back to the whole car commute thing, or a really long bike ride. And you're significantly farther from the mountains by bike, too.
Ahh, right, car-free commute is a good point.
> Fort Collins was something else that looked pretty interesting, but I didn't see many jobs there.
My reaction to Fort Collins was similar, really liked it too, but seemed more like Bend as far as lack of jobs/backup-plans go. I like smaller cities and I work remotely, so backup plans shouldn't matter as much as it does to me. I'm probably too risk-averse in that sense, as I also had the same fears when looking at a move to Corvallis before. I suppose I'll always need to be near a bigger city to compensate.
There's a small tech scene in Fort Collins, mostly focused on hardware. Intel, HP, AMD, Broadcom, Avago, LSI, and Microsoft come to mind. (Well, three of those are now one)
A small market like that is good and bad. There is no glut of engineers, so you aren't a cheap throwaway commodity, but options are fewer.
You could use Boulder/Denver/Longmont as your fallback. A sizeable commute, but that adds IBM, NASA, Western Digital, Xilinx, Avaya... and a host of startups.
The real startup scene in Fort Collins is probably microbreweries. Engineers of every type are starting microbreweries.
Curious to know in what ways you think so? Not that I disagree. I was at the intersection of Broomfield/Erie/Lafayette and we spend much more of our non-being home time in and around Boulder, Lafayette and Louisville than Broomfield. So, while Broomfield was our residence, Boulder was still the draw.
I used to live in Lafayette and definitely agree- the only reason we lived in Lafayette vs. Boulder was the housing was much more affordable. The town is pretty quiet but we would always drive up to Boulder if we wanted to hang out or do something fun. Denver wasn't too far away either, so we would go there for concerts or conventions or whatever.
I moved out to Oregon and live in the Salem area for a similar reason- the housing is much more affordable here than in Portland. I'm about an hour from Portland and an hour from the coast, so we split our time up between the two.
"lively" Boulder is a bland white town full of people who are almost exactly the same. They are awesome, granted, but there's little to no diversity here. The college kids are mostly wealthy out of staters whose parents can afford to pay 200000+ for an ok state school. Most come here to play hippie, snowboard, and party.
Boulder is hippies with breast implants. Beautiful, wealthy, educated people who want to isolate themselves off from the rest of society. People here are very bland. There is next to no nightlife. Bleck, what a disappointment.
Really nice piece. I basically moved from SF to Boulder (with stops abroad in between). What you're talking about in the blog is playing out right now with the "make growth pay it's own way".
They are smart people spearheading these anti-growth measures. They want (like you said) the Boulder from 30 years ago. They are motivated, smart, and have the time to attack growth.
And cutting back on construction is only going to turn this place into more of bland sanitized white suburb college town. There's little to no culture or character or funkiness here and cutting off growth will only serve to stamp it out more.
People here like to say silly things like "entrepreneur capital of america" or "startup hub" or silly things like that. Shoot, coming from SF, this place doesn't have even a drop in the bucket of what the bay has. I'm not saying that's bad or good but thinking it's a real tech hub is a joke.
Note: Boulder is great if you already make good money, like a small quiet life, have your partner, and value access to nature over access to people, music, culture, art, etc.
But if Boulder looked more like Denver (or Bend like Portland), you might not have made that choice, right? I'm guessing that you wanted those spots because they were semi-rural mountain cities with low population density.
So even if you did move to Boulder, you'd probably oppose the construction of more high-density housing, right?
There are smart ways to do high-density housing while preserving the character of cities like Boulder. The rail line from Denver to Boulder is going to help a lot of people justify not having cars in Boulder, and traffic congestion is probably the most harmful effect of squeezing lots of people into a small space. There are lots of places east of downtown/CU that you could build clusters of high-density, 4-5 story, mixed-use residential that wouldn't obstruct mountain views for the most powerful (i.e. richest) homeowners in Boulder. It would look ugly if you did something like the Denver Tech Center where 15-25 story buildings are placed on a ridge on the plains with no trees, but you could conceal quite a bit with the right placement of native trees around smaller 4-5 story buildings.
I want to live someplace that's not too big in area, actually. Padova (where I've spent most of the past 15 years) is actually about the same size as Boulder, and has more than twice as many people, and I liked it just fine.
What I want is to live within biking distance of where I work (10 minutes today - yay!), as well as be able to ride my road and mountain bikes, and have other outdoor stuff close by. In Boulder, to get something affordable, you need to live in one of the nearby towns, which means either an hour by bike, or a drive. Thus - for me - defeating the entire purpose of not living in a big city.
I like density in other words, as long as the total population is not too high.
Denver isn't exactly great at the moment either. However, we've taken a more proactive approach by building more housing instead of trying to keep people out.
How are you liking Bend? I remember reading some of your comments on HN a few years ago since we were living in Portland. In Seattle now and own a place, but are thinking someday we might sell it and move to Bend. We've always found central Oregon uniquely beautiful. My friend just bought a place in Boulder, and I visited and enjoyed hanging out there. Things did seem a bit more expensive.
Up: Bend is a rad place. The lazy river / float scene is really fun. There are approx. 26 breweries, great food, and a really active community. On a typical weekend everyone is out and about which makes it easier to meet folks and get integrated into the community.
Down: Bend was not built for the massive influx of people that the city has seen in recent years. The transportation group is trying to work through it but they will need to be very creative as there is a nice distance gap between East Bend and West Bend.
There are also lots of traffic circles that are single lane that seem to slow down traffic (good and bad) but they run right up against homes and businesses so there are not many options for expansion.
If you own in Seattle now is a great time to sell. We moved a year ago (enjoyed Seattle and its quirks/beer/outdoors) to a more Bend-like community and run our business from here. The transition was worth its weight in gold and we don't look back one bit.
Why is everybody mentioning Bend? Is there a big tech scene there? I used to live in Colorado so I know there's a lot of tech companies in the Boulder area, but I've only been living the the PNW for a few years and haven't heard much about the technology scene here other than everything up in the Seattle area (Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Valve, etc.)
Summer in Oregon is wonderful, no two ways about it. What we'll have to see is how the winter is over here. I grew up in Eugene and lived in Portland, and just can't handle that endless gray.
Hopefully we get back to the "normal" Summer in Oregon relatively soon (not looking likely thanks to the Blob/El Nino). Living in Portland without an AC this Summer has been terrible.
From your blog, it looks like you were pricing sizable houses rather than higher density housing like a 2br/2ba condo, which can be found for much less. Although I grew up in Alaska, I have no regrets about buying a modest condo next to trails and with a short bike commute instead of a larger place further from everything I care about. Anyway, there would be more incentive to build high-density housing if more people wanted to buy it instead of writing off the housing market as insane and going elsewhere (be it the eastern suburbs or somewhere completely different as you did).
Prices are lower all across the board in Bend. We were looking into some townhouses in Boulder, and they're still several hundred dollars more than what we pay in a nice part of Bend within walking distance of downtown.
Obviously, but no amount of high-density construction in Boulder will make it cheaper than equivalent accommodations in Bend (unless Bend gets a lot more expensive).
I'm not questioning your decision, but it's worth being realistic about what high-density construction could achieve.
Even though there does seem to be a large influx of people in cities like SF, NYC, Austin, it seems like there is going to be an even larger exodus to smaller towns with sane costs of living in the coming years. It could also be my that my friends are all also finally entering the age where we want to buy homes, so these sorts of places are more appealing than ever.
Bend is lovely. I'm curious, what was it like finding a place to live? Bend is somewhat notorious right now for it's <1% rental vacancy rates, which may be the lowest in the country. There was a news story earlier this year about a local medical center's new hires having a hard time finding a place to live -- I think one person even gave up and left their job because of it.
Sums up why we ended up in Bend, Oregon rather than Boulder, Colorado. In the latter, there is a small but significant group of people whose idea is that the area needs fewer jobs, not smarter housing.
Edit: http://journal.dedasys.com/2015/06/18/boulder-colorado-vs-be... - more about our choice, for the curious.